The Oldest Restaurants in America

Founded in 1910 as the Cattlemen’s Café in Oklahoma City’s Stockyards City area, its first customers included cowboys, ranchers, and cattle haulers. Details of the restaurant’s early days are scarce, but one H.V. “Homer” Paul took possession of the place in 1926. (There is a California chain of the same name but they aren’t affiliated.)

By 1945, it was owned by Hank Frey, who then lost the place to local rancher Gene Wade Jr. in a dice game in 1945, and the Wades retained ownership for the next 45 years. An Oklahoma City restaurateur named Diсk Stubbs bought the place in 1990, rebranding it from a café to a steakhouse. The focus of the menu, not surprisingly, is prime or choice corn-fed Midwestern beef.

Founded in the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer in 1907, the Bright Star Restaurant was originally a 25-seat café with a horseshoe-shaped bar opened by Greek immigrant Tom Bonduris. Now a 330-seat restaurant, it has been run by members of the Koikos family, also from Greece, since 1925. (Birmingham has a long history of Greek-owned restaurants.) Southern fare, sometimes with a Greek accent, is the specialty.

Italian immigrant Frank Varallo Sr. opened Varrallo’s, then known as Frank Varallo’s Chile Parlor, in 1907 in Nashville, Tennessee, and at one point delivered gallons of chili daily around downtown Nashville with a three-wheel Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Frank Varallo Jr. took over the restaurant when he was 14 after his father died.

The restaurant sold in December 2019 and while it’s no longer in the Varallo family, they still serve chili, plain or with spaghetti and/or tamales, in addition to a variety of Southern dishes

Florida’s oldest restaurant, located in the Tampa neighborhood of Ybor City, was opened by Cuban immigrant Casimiro Hernandez Sr. and is still run by his descendants. Columbia calls itself the largest Spanish restaurant in the world. Black bean soup, tapas, and paella are among the specialties. There are now several other locations, including one at Tampa International Airport.

In the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, in what was then the largest Italian community in the city, Italian immigrant Joshua Anthony Rao converted a small shop into a modest restaurant, running it until he died in 1909. Members of his extended family are still in charge. In 1977, Mimi Sheraton, then the New York Times restaurant critic, gave the place a rave review for its unpretentious home-style Italian fare.

Rao’s, which only had eight tables (it now has ten), was overwhelmed and its longtime regular customers couldn’t get in. To remedy the situation, Rao’s became one of the country’s toughest reservations by instituting a system of holding seats for loyal locals and ceding them to outsiders only if the regulars didn’t show up.

This New Haven, Connecticut eatery was originally a walk-in lunch wagon. Louis’ is one of several establishments that claim to have invented the hamburger — in its case a ground meat patty slapped between two pieces of toast, supposedly improvised on the spot for a customer in a rush in 1900.

The restaurant moved into its present building in 1917, and when it was threatened with demolition in the early 1970s, the entire structure was moved to its current location on Crown Street. Founder Louis Lassen’s great-grandson still runs the place today.

This Big Easy classic was opened as a saloon and restaurant by one Emile Commander (a name Americanized from his Italian father’s name, Camarda.). The Brennan family, New Orleans restaurant royalty, took the place over in 1974. Among the notable chefs who have run the kitchen since then are Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse, and Frank Brigtsen. Complex modern Creole food (Cognac-flambéed crawfish with cornbread spaetzle, blue-crab-crusted flounder with marinated artichokes) is the focus.

The Buckhorn is the holder of Colorado liquor license No. 1 and was founded by Henry H. Zietz, a one-time scout for Buffalo Bill Cody. This Denver restaurant was taken over in 1949 by Henry Zietz Jr. after his father died. Zietz Jr. sold it to a group of local investors in 1978. Steaks (both beef and buffalo), elk, quail, and sometimes ostrich and yak are on the bill of fare.

This New York City institution first opened as Iceland Brothers (by brothers of the same name) and became Iceland & Katz when Willy Katz invested in the place in 1903. In 1910, Willy’s brother Benny joined the business, and the two bought out the Icelands and renamed this landmark Lower East Side deli Katz’s. Another partner, Harry Tarowsky, came on in 1917.

Harry’s son and Benny’s son-in-law took over management in the late 1970s but sold the place to new owners in 1988. All the deli classics — matzo ball soup, chopped liver, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches, brisket, and the rest — are served.

German immigrant Carl Luger opened this landmark in Williamsburg, which was then Brooklyn’s predominantly German neighborhood. Opened as Carl Luger’s Café, Billiards, and Bowling Alley, when Carl died, his son Peter took over and renamed the restaurant after himself, transforming it into a steakhouse. (Peter’s nephew, another Carl, was the chef.)

Upon Peter’s death in 1941, ownership was assumed by his son Frederick, but it lost its luster and in 1950 was bought and revivified by a regular customer, Sol Forman who owned and operated his own family business just across the street. His family still owns what has become a Brooklyn institution and expanded in 1960 to another location in Great Neck, NY.

Originally part of the famous theatre and literary group known as Lambs Club in what was then the Herald Square Theatre District of New York City, then-manager Albert Keen became the owner of this establishment in 1885 and changed the name to Keens Steakhouse. Its most famous dish for many decades has been the “mutton chop.” Originally a slab of mutton (the meat of sheep at least two years old), it’s now a thick chop of regular (younger) lamb.

The restaurant declined and almost closed in the 1970s, but restaurateur George Schwarz bought and renovated it. Schwarz died in 2016. His estate owns the restaurant, and longtime manager Bonnie Jenkins runs it.

Originally a tiny restaurant, operated by the Heinz family as part of the Tidewater Trading Post, serving what was then the waterfront (the Hudson River once reached nearly to its doors), the Old Homestead is arguably the oldest restaurant in New York City, and the oldest continuously operating steakhouse in America. As the river receded, the steakhouse expanded, growing into a full-scale steakhouse, and in the 1940s, it was bought by a longtime employee, Harry Sherry. His grandsons own and operate it today.

This Austin, Texas beer garden and eatery was opened in 1866 by German immigrant August Scholz just after the end of the Civil War. It is said to be not just the oldest restaurant but the oldest continuously operating business of any kind in Texas. The German choral society Austin Saengerrunde bought it in 1914 and retains ownership of the building to this day — though three Austin businessmen took over the business lease in 1987.

Daniel Northcutt, the former owner of the now-closed hot-dog-centered restaurant Frank, operates the place — where the menu offers both German and Texas specialties (Wienerschnitzel as well as a Texas sausage plate).

Originally called the Oakdale Bar, the restaurant was run by Ambrose Zurfluh and his wife, Anna Imhof Zwyssig. Anna was in charge of the food, putting out homemade soup, hard-boiled eggs, and other fare for the customers, along with clams and oysters from the bay. There is some debate on whether this is the oldest restaurant in San Francisco.

While the Tadich Grill (see below) may be older, purists point out that it has changed location on numerous occasions, whereas the Old Clam House’s bar area dates from the restaurant’s founding year of 1861. This makes it technically the oldest place in the same location. Since 2011, local restaurateur Jerry Dal Bozzo and his wife, Jennifer, have been in charge. They remodeled the place and updated the menu to include sizzling seafood platters and garlic roast crab.

The Hays House was opened in Council Grove, Kansas by Seth Hays, frontiersman Daniel Boone’s great-grandson. Originally opened as a trading post and food-serving tavern with rooms, Hays House also housed a post office and a barber shop at various times and served as a venue for religious services and theatrical performances.

Jesse James and General Custer are reported to have been among its early customers. The restaurant, which serves burgers, steaks, and other American fare, has been damaged by fire and restored three times over the years. The kitchen was destroyed by a blaze in 2011, and the place might have closed permanently — but a group of 25 local residents formed an investment group to buy and reopen it.

According to Breitbach’s official history, Breitbach’s Country Dining in Balltown, Iowa was opened as a stagecoach stop in 1852 “by federal permit issued from President Millard Fillmore…” Its original name is unknown, but it has been Breitbach’s since the Breitbach family bought it in 1862. Remarkably, their descendants still own it. Steaks and seafood are featured and the pies are homemade.

Considered not just San Francisco’s but California’s oldest restaurant, Tadich Grill was originally a tent called simply Coffee Stand, opened back in the Gold Rush days by three Croatian immigrants. (Its name notwithstanding, it served fresh grilled fish, among other dishes.) It moved several times over the next few decades, becoming the New World Coffee Saloon and then the Cold Day Restaurant.

Croatian John Tadich bought and renamed the place after himself in 1887. In 1928, another Croatian, John Buich, bought Tadich Grill, and the Buich family continues to run it today. The menu focuses on Dungeness crab, petrale sole, and other seafood.

This New Orleans institution is the oldest family-run restaurant in the country, and by some definitions, the oldest restaurant, period. Originally opened by 18-year-old Antoine Aciatore, an immigrant from France, and his wife, Julie, Antoine’s was located one block away from its current French Quarter location.

Julie, and later their son Jules, took over the place after Antoine’s health failed in the 1870s. Jules’ son Roy succeeded him and ran Antoine’s until 1972. Roy’s grandson Rick Blount became CEO and proprietor in 2005. The menu of rich Creole specialties includes oysters Rockefeller and eggs Sardou, two famous dishes invented here.